The home base station has different names in different standard organizations, which is called as Home Node B (HNB)/Home Evolved Node B (HeNB) (the home base station of the Third Generation mobile communication technology (3G) is called as HNB, and the base station of Long Time Evolution (LTE) is called as HeNB) in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards organization, and is called as Femto (a general name of all types of home base stations) in other standard organizations such as the Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2). In fact, they are essentially the same, and are all femtocells. The home base station is a miniature and low-power cellular base stations, which are mainly applies in indoor places such as home and office. The function of it is to act as supplementary of the indoor coverage of a cellular network and provides voice and data service for users.
The term of Femto Cell is initially proposed by British Ubiquisys Company, and is originated from the deficiency of the early coverage of the Third Generation mobile communication technology (3G) and the challenge of the Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology. The emphasis of network construction of the 3G in the initial stage of development is outdoor coverage, but the requirements for indoor communication of the users usually cannot be well satisfied. Especially, the Wi-Fi technology is rapidly generalized in recent years and the Wi-Fi/cellular dual-mode cellphones are continuously increased, but the 3G voice and data services have a risk of being offloaded. In this case, the concept of Femto Cell is followed by mobile operators since it was proposed. With this new technology and terminal, the mobile operators can enter into the market of home and office places which were formally controlled by the fixed network and the Wi-Fi network.
Femto Cell is able to automatically complete configuration and automatically start work through a broadband circuit connection such as an existing Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) and Local Area Network (LAN), etc., and a connection of the remote end from the Internet protocol (IP) to the mobile network implemented by a dedicated gateway. It has a figure that is similar to the Wi-Fi, and may be applied separately or may be integrated in the home gateway as a part of the home network. Meanwhile, Femto Cell is a new technology which implements the fixed mobile convergence, and is the best way to implement the Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), which helps mobile operators maximize their benefits and reduce the dependence on the cellular/Wi-Fi dual-mode cellphone, so as to provide differentiated services. Today, with the trend of fixed mobile convergence increasing, the development of Femto Cell even becomes the focus of the industry.
The site registration and authentication will be involved in the process of the home base station accessing the network. The home base station is generally fixed in one place for use at present, and when performing site registration and authentication, a port problem will not be involved, however, once the home base station moves to other areas, the problem that the home base station is unable to access the network caused by the home base station locating in other areas besides the registration place.